The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is a nearly five thousand acre preserve about 100 miles southeast of Nantucket. Its deep canyons and tall underwater mountains create a unique ecosystem that fosters rare and diverse species from deep-sea coral to endangered whales.
It’s also home to the lobsters and crabs that Denny Colbert catches to make his living. He’s happy he’s allowed to drop traps in a place he first started fishing over 30 years ago.
“I personally think it's a great thing and I know my fellow fishermen that fish in that area think it's a great thing," Colbert commented.
Colbert was working those waters before President Obama issued a proclamation creating the only marine national monument in the Atlantic and closing it to commercial fishing. In 2020, during his first term, President Trump re-opened the area, saying existing laws were sufficient to protect the monument’s plants and animals. Less than a year-and-a-half later, President Biden closed the monument to commercial fishing once again. On Friday, a second Trump proclamation removed that restriction.
Colbert said, it’s frustrating that the rules keep changing.
"Obviously, we're going to talk politics here because that's what it comes down to," he said. "When we get a Democratic president, they'll probably reverse it back again. So it's going to be like a yo-yo which is kind of unfortunate for everybody involved."
Dr. Jessica Redfern is Associate Vice President of Ocean Conservation Science in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. The aquarium conducts survey flights over the monument, which covers the edge of the continental shelf, dropping from 200 meters to thousands of meters deep. Redfern said observers spotted over 1,000 animals near the surface during a single-day survey in July, including seven endangered fin whales, one endangered sperm whale, one humpback whale, two minke whales, 781 common dolphins, 108 Risso's dolphins, 55 pilot whales, 30 bottlenose dolphins, 20 striped dolphins, and 22 devil rays. Redfern said that type of biodiversity makes the monument a special place.
"We all want to see these ecosystems thriving and I know the fishing community wants to see the thriving ecosystems," Redfern said. "We're all united in that and so trying to point to solutions for how we can best do that, that's our commitment, is really using our scientific research to best understand and inform that."
But, Redfern says the Aquarium’s research shows existing fishing regulations do not adequately protect all the rare and endangered species within the monument without a commercial fishing ban.
